Open Letter to Amy Nicholson

This is an actual review of the movie Lone Survivor by Amy Nicholson:

Here's a movie that'll flop in Kabul. Lone Survivor, the latest by Battleship director Peter Berg, is a jingoistic snuff film about a Navy SEAL squadron outgunned by the Taliban in the mountainous Kunar province. After four soldiers — played with muscles and machismo by Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Emile Hirsch and Ben Foster — get ID'd by Afghan goat herders, they're in a race to climb to the top of the nearest summit and summon an airlift before these civilians can sprint to the nearest village and alert local leader Ahmad Shah. It doesn't go well.

Berg's flick bleeds blood red, bone-fracture white, and bruise blue. It's based on the memoirLone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by sole evacuee Marcus Luttrell (played by Wahlberg) — and that's only a spoiler if you've ignored the title. Luttrell didn't exactly write his book. Rather than sitting in front of a word processor, he was back in action in Iraq. Instead, the United States Navy hired British novelist Patrick Robinson, who, among other embellishments, upped the number of enemy Taliban fighters from 10 to 200. Hey, whatever, man. Those aliens inBattleship weren't real, either.

Lone Survivor's problems are more complex than its Rambo-esque exuberance for machine-gun fire. The near-wordless second half is a deadly dubstep of bullets and snare drums punctuated with the occasional curse. Here's 90 seconds of dialogue transcribed in its entirety: "Goddamn, this sucks!" "Fuck you!" "Fuck!" "Damn, fucking burns!" This doesn't help advance the plot, which can pretty much be summed up as: Don't die. And the film actually gets worse when the guys open their mouths.

These four men were heroes. But these heroes were also men. As the film portrays them, their attitudes to the incredibly complex War on Terror, fought hillside by bloody hillside in the Afghan frontier with both U.S. and Taliban forces contributing to an unconscionably high civilian body count, were simple: Brown people bad, American people good. When the guys debate whether to kill the three goat herders who've stumbled onto their hiding place — a dilemma that, morality aside, could have been solved if any of them had recalled that middle school logic problem about the fox, the chicken, the feed, and the too-small boat — Foster grabs an unarmed teenager by the face and insists, "That's death. Look at death." And when the firefight starts, he bellows, "You can die for your country — I'm going to live for mine."

We're meant to cheer, not that anyone in my theater did. But there will be audiences who do, and I'm not entirely sure I'm comfortable with what they're cheering for. This is death. Look at death.

Berg is no dummy. He's done the right thing by refusing to whitewash these guys as saints, although three of the four are depicted as devoted husbands and fiancées, and the fourth gets to be Mark Wahlberg. And Berg is justified in hoisting these guys up as real-life action stars, building his case with an opening montage of actual Navy SEAL training footage in which screaming instructors winnow a pack of athletes into an all-for-one-one-for-all band of badass brothers who, when forced to float in freezing ocean waves, link arms and sing "Silent Night."

They were ready for action. "We wanted that fight at the highest volume," Wahlberg says, "the loudest, coldest, darkest, most unpleasant of the unpleasant fights." OK, but did the local villagers whom we see get caught in the crossfire want that fight? Each, like Wahlberg's Luttrell, had families and friends and a full life, and each gets dispatched without a second thought.

I'd like to think that, on some level, Berg is questioning the sense of a film — and a foreign policy — that makes target practice of our magnificent teams of hard-bodied, hairy-chested, rootin'-tootin', shootin', parachutin', double-cap-crimpin' frogmen, these soldiers who decorate their bunks with baby pictures of themselves next to an American flag and are so nobly eager to sacrifice their lives for each other and their country. But the ammo doesn't stop blasting long enough for their deaths to have weight. Instead, Lone Survivor just reads like a quasi-political exaggeration of a slasher film: the cellphones that don't work, the rescuers just out of reach, the killers chasing our victims through the woods.

What are we meant to learn from this waste of life? Who is even to blame? All Lone Survivor offers is the queasiest apology of the year. Grunts a battered Wahlberg to his even more-battered best buddy, "I'm sorry that we didn't kill more of these motherfuckers." Replies his fellow soldier, "Oh, don't be fucking sorry. We're going to kill way more of them."

Dear Ms. Nicholson, 

I reprint the review so that no one thinks I took anything out of context because, unfortunately, you do just that in addressing the movie.

For starters, I haven't seen the movie yet, but I have read the book. The author, Marcus Luttrell, has stated that the movie's faithful to the book, so I feel that I can comment intelligently given that endorsement.  If after I see the movie I think that's in error, I'll post a retraction.

Let's start at the beginning:  Lone Survivor, the latest by Battleship director Peter Berg, is a jingoistic snuff film about a Navy SEAL squadron outgunned by the Taliban in the mountainous Kunar province.   Really?  This is a snuff film, with a title like Lone Survivor?  Isn't that taking artistic license a bit too far?  Sure, people die in the movie.  Yes, there's plenty of gunfire.  But to call this a snuff film is to confuse the issue.  Ms Nicholson, what were the SEALs supposed to do when the Taliban, notorious for torturing and beheading its captives, approached them with weapons blazing?  Were they supposed to hold an Algonquin Round Table meeting and sing Kumbaya?  If anything, the fact that the SEALs didn't shoot the goatherders who stumbled upon their hide should belie the notion that this was a snuff film.  But to mention that would detract from your premise.

Ms. Nicholson, what do you know about Navy SEALs?  Do you seriously think that a SEAL team of four members would be defeated by ten Taliban?  Do you know anything about the exceptionalism of the best fighting force the world's ever known?  About the only way they would have lost to ten Taliban is if they'd somehow been taken unawares and been shot in the back.  A running gunbattle between four SEALs and ten Taliban would have been over in a matter of minutes, and three SEALs would not have been lost.  They might have suffered wounds, one might have died, but there little chance three SEALs would have lost to ten Taliban.  It also begs the question how you even believe that there were only ten Taliban there.  Were you there?  Do you have unimpeachable eyewitness accounts, satellite imagery or any other probative evidence disproving Luttrell's assertions that there were upwards of at least one hundred Taliban confronting the four SEALs?

Your criticism of the wordless portions of the movie I can't address directly, since I haven' t seen the movie, but conceptually, isn't a movie a visual medium at its core?  What's wrong with there being stretches with action and no dialogue?  Do you need the actors telling you what's going on to understand? And in an action film, what explanation is really needed?

Perhaps the most misleading and inflammatory portion of this screed is:  As the film portrays them, their attitudes to the incredibly complex War on Terror, fought hillside by bloody hillside in the Afghan frontier with both U.S. and Taliban forces contributing to an unconscionably high civilian body count, were simple: Brown people bad, American people good.   Again, really?  What about the locals, i.e., brown people, to borrow your term, who rescue  Luttrell and protect him against the Taliban who were bad brown people?  If all brown people were bad, why didn't the SEALs kill the goatherders, whom they were pretty sure would reveal their position? The fact of the matter is that as a matter of operational security, one of the options available to them was to kill them, not because they were brown people, but because of the risk they presented.  The same thing has happened in various theaters of war with various non-combatants of different colors, so this is a non-starter insofar as a match to light a controversy is concerned...except to the uninitiated.  And that's really your point, isn't it?

If there's one thing we seem to agree on it's the casting of Mark Wahlberg as Marcus Luttrell.  I applaud his resolve to make this film and stand up to Hollywood punks like Tom Cruise and Kanye West, but he's the wrong actor for this role, if for no other reason that he's too short.

If the movie shows a crossfire in which innocent civilians were caught, that's wrong, because that never happened. The Taliban did threaten villagers to give up Luttrell, and if that's what's being shown, that's fact.  But who threatened them?  Did Luttrell?  Only when he was first found by the villagers who ultimately saved him, and he was unaware of their intentions, did he threaten them.  But to lay any harm to villagers on the SEALs is unfair -- and wrong.  Had it been so, the military could have done the far more expedient thing of sending in warplanes with smart or not-so-smart bombs and take out the location of the target, thereby incurring collateral damage.  Or it could have used your friend Barack Obama's favorite toy, the drone, to possibly take out the bombmaker -- or innocent civilians.  The whole point of sending in the SEAL team was to make a surgical strike.  Think of it in these terms:  Surgical scalpel versus five hundred or a thousand pound bomb.

Your equating the mission in this movie to a political slasher film is ridiculous.  The fact of the matter is that the fog of war happens in every action to change the original plan.  Why do you think Michael Murphy was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor?  It was because, when his communications didn't function properly, he exposed himself to gain a better vantage point to establish communication to request assistance for his team. This happens in war.  Perhaps you should read a book or two about actual operations before you blithely dismiss actual events in your rush to liken them to Courtney Cox and David Arquette plot twists.

You ask what we are asked to learn from this.  Well, let's try to figure that out together, shall we?  First, the esprit d' corps within SEAL teams is beyond exceptional.  SEAL teams are a finely honed edge, a tool that is used to further our country's foreign policy.  Your thinly veiled disgust with the movie belies your true motivation, and that is anti-war.  You're entitled to your opinion.  But consider that since we went into Afghanistan, since we took out Bin Laden, there have been no further attacks on U.S. soil by Al Qaeda or its minions -- unless, like me, you believe that Benghazi was an attack on U.S. soil...but you probably echo Cankles' reasoning, throw your hands in the air and ask What does it matter?

Those of us who never served also learned the unbelievable sacrifice that our fellow citizens make so that you can write the pap you so obviously revel.  We learned that exceptionalism comes from every corner of this country, in different sizes and shapes, and asks little from us in return.  

What apology does Lone Survivor offer?  You mistakenly take a line of bravado exchanged between brothers in battle and extrapolate to suggest that the movie has to have some political message.  Instead, you owe an apology to readers who have been misled into thinking that this movie is nothing more than a shoot-'em-up, macho lovefest, when in fact it embodies the best this country has to offer.  It shows how our men valiantly acted to protect each other and serve our country in the harshest of environments against a numerically superior force of religious zealots who would sooner have you covered head to toe in cloth than allow you to walk around as you are free to do in this country.

To criticize the cinematography, or the direction, or the acting, or the screenplay or any technical aspect of the film would be one thing, but your review is so transparently a slam of the military and what is does that it ventures into the realm of muckraking.  That you didn't like the movie was undeniable.  That you disagree with the subject of the movie is the more worrisome aspect of your review.  Your review should be offered as political commentary and not a movie review.

UPDATE:  Ms. Nicholson,

I've now seen the movie.  You, madam, are an idiot.

First of all, this silliness about the movie being propaganda...this is a movie about men in battle and those who didn't come home.  How on earth is that propaganda?  Insofar as the notion that this might be a recruiting vehicle for the SEAL teams, how, I ask, is the notion of pushing back into one's leg a part of the femur and digging out jagged shrapnel an enticement to join the SEALs?

I was right:  The Taliban was shown shooting Danny Dietz in the face.  If that's not bad, what is?  Failing to pick up the check for a woman who thinks she's snarkily witty?  And since a member of the Taliban actually did this -- trust me, they can figure this out forensically; have you ever seen CSI? -- wouldn' t that mean that there are bad brown people, as you designate them?  When did any of the SEALs utter a racial epithet?  Didn't good brown people rescue and protect Luttrell?

Ms. Nicholson, the only person who's guilty of propagandizing is you.  You have an agenda and decided to take the opportunity to trash an honest movie about an actual event to further that agenda.  You may be able to string words together, but your analytical abilities are woefully lacking.  This was about as much a piece of propaganda as was Mary Poppins.  In fact, both those movies share one common trait:  They were born out of a real life experience the author lived.  Thanks to Saving Mr. Banks, we know that now of Mary Poppins.

Movie reviews are not supposed to be the arena for pushing a political agenda.  Well, unless you're Josef Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl.   Perhaps you should view Triumph of the Will and compare that to Lone Survivor.  Then you'd see what propaganda really is.

(c) 2014 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles